The Greek election was a vote any sane party would have longed to lose

Anyone familiar with cricket will have heard the phrase, 'a good
toss to lose'. It's what the pundits say when the 'winning' captain has
to make a tough decision which may come back to haunt him, while the
captain who picked the wrong side of the coin can relax, free of any
responsibility for misjudging the weather conditions.

The Greek election, too, was one which any party leader in his right mind must have longed to lose. No wonder Antonis Samaras looked so sombre. In case you think I exaggerate, just think back to
1992, when the ghastly prospect of Neil Kinnock in No.10 gave John Major
an unexpected victory. Within months, the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), into which Major had taken us, had destroyed Tory economic credibility for more than a decade to come.

Celebrating? Antonis Samaras, leader of the New Democracy party, will inevitably attract criticism when he implements austerity measures

Now, Alexis Tsipras,
the charismatic young leader of the Syriza Party, must be laughing all
the way to the cash-starved Greek bank. He will be sitting pretty while
Samaras does the bidding of his EU masters. It's not difficult to
predict the likely outcome - Angela Merkel will agree some minor
concessions to the new Greek Government, so it can save face, but it
will then have to start implementing painful cuts. With its rapidly
shrinking economy, it won't be possible for these cuts to be made
without making the Government ever more unpopular. When it all falls
apart amidst riots and a growth of extremism, Tsipras's Syriza Party
will be swept to power on a wave of hostility to the EU and Greece will
finally leave the Eurozone and return to the Drachma it should never
have abandoned in the first place.

So what difference will the Greek election result make to Europe?
Only the other week, Spain's Prime Minister foolishly claimed a bailout
as a victory. It's true that, for a few hours, the money markets
demonstrated some relief at the bail-out, but by the end of the day they
rightly concluded that it would only delay the inevitable.

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More often
than not, a 'victory' of this kind only deludes the 'victor' into
putting off necessary reforms. The victory of the EU's stooges in Greece
will do precisely that. Samaras, whose New Democracy Party bears more responsibility than any other for the collapse of the Greek
economy, will fail. When next the EU is forced into a Greek bail-out,
the cost will be greater than ever.

But, for all that, what happens in Greece is a sideshow. It's tiny
(and shrinking) economy is not big enough to derail the madcap euro
project on its own. Those two deeply flawed but comparatively gigantic
economies, Italy and Spain, will do that. Premature crowing at the Greek
election result will soon come back to haunt the EU elite, which bears
responsibility for this unfolding catastrophe. It would be like England
football supporters celebrating scraping a victory over Sweden and
forgetting that they might face Spain and Germany in later rounds.